


The Words

by kangelique



Series: The Captain Swan Playlist [9]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: "And I know the scariest part is letting go", "He's more like a ghost", Almost Kiss, Chapter 2 is quotes, Confrontations, Deleted scene season 3 episode 17, Denial denial and more denial, Emma and Killian's thoughts throughout the seasons, Emma fucken cares, F/M, Fear of Being Loved, Fear of love, Feelings Realization, Gen, Idiots in Love, Killian is poetic because yeah, Love Confessions, Love confessions in a letter, POV Emma, Sad but bittersweet, Unrequited love!!!!, quotes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:08:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23617258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kangelique/pseuds/kangelique
Summary: Emma finds a letter -but Killian didn't write this during the missing year. It's date goes back to a few days ago, when her almost fiancé turned into a monkey and almost killed her. Now Killian has some explaining to do.(Plus Chapter 2 is Emma and Killian's thoughts on each other throughout the seasons, more unrequited love and then some not so unrequited love)
Relationships: Captain Hook | Killian Jones/Emma Swan
Series: The Captain Swan Playlist [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1327670
Comments: 2
Kudos: 23





	1. Deleted Scene

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I already wrote another deleted scene for this same episode, and for my same playlist. Maybe some of you already read it (or not, but if you haven't, there's more letters and Killian professing his love if you need a dose of angst and love and poetry) but this take focuses more on Emma. With this quarantine, I also recently finished a re-run of season 3 so that's where inspiration struck again, and I had this letter pending in one of my notebooks so I figured it was time to put it to good use.

**Chapter 1: Deleted** **Scene**

_Dear Swan,_

  
_It was through gritted teeth you admitted to another how I was your ghost, and perhaps I should confess how the small lift of your corners followed me behind closed eyes._ _For when you crossed the invisible line and the dark took me by the shoulders for the hundredth time, a foreign weight fell on me and such came the realization that the days would not bleed into years the same._

  
_The demon once demanded to know who you were, and when your gaze met mine across the landscape your lie touched the ground silently and you’d swallowed thickly because I knew how to recognize the look of someone who’d been alone._ _I was reminded of your hair when the first rays of the sun broke through my quarters, and like a fool I ran after the light, in the hopes I’d find you nursing your coffee, in the hopes I’d be met by the roll of your eyes, in the hopes of you._

  
_So it was on the nights when your voice was an echo, and I was forced to create the outline of your memory on paper, I would wonder if maybe in another life, would you have cupped my rotten heart between your palms?_ _If, maybe in another life, where time were infinite, I could have resumed climbing your walls and finally seen you bare of any breastplate, helmet, or gauntlet._

_My darling, would I have truly seen you? Love, would you have allowed me to?_

  
_I suppose I shall not know, for your heart has broken anew, and I musn’t be your ghost._

  
_I simply musn’t be anything._

  
_Sincerely Killian_

Emma glanced at his elegant handwriting one last time and inhaled a sharp breath as she quickly folded the scroll back in two.

Killian briefly expressed his goodbyes, bowing his head in the direction of her parents and Regina like he was still in the Enchanted Forest -maybe it was instinct?-and sending her a grimace that she guessed was supposed to be a smile.

Well, not guessed. After all every smile she ever tried to give him came out wrong too, shooting him a scowl or a frown or a roll of her eyes that she wasn’t aiming for, somehow her walls shooting up so fast that any smile turned into a mistake, out of her control and brought to light under vulnerability, under safety. 

Her heart pounding in her ears drowned out the voices of her family behind her, something about dinner at Granny’s and not letting Henry drive again, but the only thing evident was Killian’s retreating footsteps. She followed him past the doorway, the immediate urge to invite him getting stuck on her tongue when his Swan! What the hell was that? And him bursting into the rooftop flashed across her eyes and the folded letter creased with her curling fingers, for a moment not giving a damn that her parents, Regina, her _son_ were inside the loft and the wood wasn’t as thick as she would have preferred it to be when she slammed the door. 

“You wrote this.” Emma waved the letter like it had personally offended her, eyebrows arching up in _Hm? Hm?! Explain yourself_. Maybe that was the problem. 

Maybe only getting compliments; encouragements when she thought she was gonna fail; heavy gaze that screamed he understood her; smiles that did nothing but melt her insides and make her weak in the knees; words that literally dripped with his belief in her, in her magic and _everything_ was the problem.

Killian’s eyes widened, and pain pinched his face, those telling eyebrows for once not shooting up like she expected but dropping into a furrow instead; his gaze fell to the floor and their feet like a game of dominoes. “Where did you get that,” he whispered, enough faint fluorescent light for his jaw ticking to be clear and for his Adam’s apple bobbing slightly to give him away. 

“I know you wrote this in New York. Why?” Emma spit out because really, why? 

Why did he have to care? 

He’d spent centuries, fucken _centuries_ , mourning the woman he loved, missing her, loving her, trying to get revenge on Rumplestiltskin for killing her, and then of all the people in the world, he was gonna care about her? 

Why did Regina have to be right about the yearning looks and doey eyes, and why when he’d said Did you miss me? had she taken a step back, not by the force of getting her memories back but from the force of him in front of her, real and there and masking his hurt with a careless smile, his question unanswered and name sounding like a dread from her lips because she absolutely dreaded the effect he had on her, the way it made her self control slip at the mercy not of Captain Hook but Killian Jones. And Killian Jones was worse.

Just why had there been a stab of missing, maybe missing _him_ , in her chest the instant their eyes met again. Just why. 

Killian remained silent. Seriously, that was his course of action? After realizing she’d found the letter where he’d spilled his guts out, that was his response, to let her be mad, to make her the bad guy? Well not today, buddy.

“Fine,” Emma snapped. “You don’t want to be honest with me, that’s just great, Hook. And while we’re at it with this dishonesty shit, you know what? Whatever happened this past year, whatever you’re not telling me, I don’t care! I. Don’t. Care.”

Killian stood there, not shaking his head at the silent assumptions and deliberate accusations she was throwing his way, not even nodding, not confronting her about her feelings, not getting her to say the truth, not talking to her in double meaning where she has to read between the lines twice and then freak out, not closing the distance between them until she pulled away. 

That was their dance : He took two steps closer and she took two steps back, always this back and forth.

“Here,” Emma sighed, fight zapping from her hunched shoulders and sagging the palm she slapped on his chest. She pressed his letter against the exposed skin spoiled with curly black hair. “I’m tired of living in the past,” she mumbled, regret shaking her head.

He was in the past, right? Their kiss in Neverland, the silent time below deck mourning Neal with someone who _got it_ , the speeches of understanding in his eyes, climbing the beanstalk more half scared out of her mind that he could read her so well than the fact that they were hanging several feet off the ground. Their everything was in the past.

It’d been a year. Twelve months, and he was supposed to be in the past, he was supposed to belong to her past. 

But Emma’s fist stayed on his chest, and her fingers strayed away from logic and walls to spread over the uneasy thumping of his heart. She held her breath as his eyes locked with hers, deep and soft with something she would not put a name to, and she stilled as his calloused palm grazed her knuckles and covered them tenderly, _too_ tenderly. 

“I know how you feel,” he murmured, feet moving with hers until she hit a wall. She didn’t break the gaze, not this time. 

Not even because her whole family was about to walk out any minute and catch her panting under Killian’s blue, blue eyes. They both searched, each of them desperately trying to figure out the other, loudly insisting how much they’d missed each other in the quiet hall. How it had been a year and they’d both been lost, both been alone, surrounded by his crew and by her son but still _alone._

Emma had told Walsh the truth. 

Captain Hook was a ghost. 

Killian Jones was _her_ ghost. 

“Goodnight, love,” he said and she stiffened. She pressed her lips together tightly from telling him the same thing she’d told Walsh. That Killian Jones was someone she couldn’t shake, someone who haunted her. 

“Goodnight, Killian,” she breathed, and forgot. Forgot calling him by his moniker helped put a wall between them. The wall of hero and villain, savior and pirate. As her eyes fluttered close, as their breath intermingled, as their noses brushed, as his warmth breath hit her parted lips, all stop signs failed. 

Footsteps approaching and the knob being twisted didn’t fail. Killian pulled away with an apologetic smile. Wait. An apology? What was he apologizing for? A flash of white caught her eye as he proceeded down the stars and disappeared around the corner, disappearing with the confirmation that someone missed her, someone _knew_ her. 

Someone loved her. 

Him.


	2. Quotes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For some reason, there's more Killian quotes than Emma's but well, the muse is the leader here not me. None of these quotes are robbed from any other show, I came up with them when I was passing the time on the road to Minneapolis, and they've been sitting on my phone's notes for a while so I was figured it was time to give them a home.

***********From Killian to Emma***********

_“Perhaps it was the way you slowly, oh so slowly, crept under my skin on the nights when missing you felt like drowning, and I became almost perfectly content in allowing my love for you to shatter me.”_

_“I don’t regret you, for I could never regret you, reminding me of what I could be and silently daring me to be that better, and I must admit no one else had been brave enough to challenge my rotten heart.”_

_“With you it was different. And with you, I saw myself reflected in your eyes, and perhaps, just perhaps, my pain wasn’t the worst part of my past, it was the fact that it took much too long to find you and then lose you to the demons in your head.”_

_“Shh, shh. Close your eyes, darling, and follow my voice back home to the white picket fence and the future we both promised to trust.”_

_“At times I still feel unworthy, and I wonder how you can see past the blood on my hands and the bodies I’ve buried. But in those times you take hold of my hand and I believe when you remind me I am not the same man I was then.”_

_“And the only thing I’m most ashamed of is the fact that I wasn’t strong enough to fight off the devil when you had it right on your shoulder and trusted me to be the angel guiding you through the chaos.”_

_“I couldn’t search for you in other women, for not one of them compared to the invisible red string that connected me to you since the very beginning of what was going to be both beauty and our tragedy.”_

_“So I thought of you every day that you were gone, and I know in your memories I was nothing more than a blur of an in between and all we could have been, but I hoped against hope that some small aching piece of you hinted at me behind closed eyes.”_

_“Like a fool I fell head over heels, and there I went again handing over my heart to an uncertain hand.”_

**********From Emma to Killian**************

_“So I wonder if in another life, another universe, another dimension, would you have found me sooner? And would we still have our hearts broken because we were both always the ones who fell too hard.”_

_“It’s strange how you vanished from my memories and then you show up at my doorstep, whatever’s flooding back in like it was just yesterday your lips hit mine and your fingers found their way into my hair.”_

_“How did you do it? How did you get to me? Because I can’t pinpoint a specific moment or a particular day, it was like a whirlwind of you and me and longing stares and secret desires and the slow realization that no one else put me first as much as you did.”_

_“You scare me. You scare me because you reached right into my chest and whispered sweet nothings and even though my ears searched for the lie, I found nothing but truth in your love.”_

*********Simply Emma and Killian**********

“Did you mean this, love?”  
“I do. But...what about you, do you mean it?”  
“My Swan, you have no idea.”  
“Is that a yes?”  
“More than anything, yes.”


End file.
